This makes configuring Squeeze Center from your Mac difficult. While it appears on a home network as a hard drive once you click on your Mac’s network globe, you will not have access to any of the Windows-based. If you have a PC-based home network, the Music Vault will appear in your networked workgroup as another PC.īut if you are an Apple guy like I am, setting up the Music Vault will be a bit more involved. It runs a version of Windows called “Windows Home Server” that hosts Logitech’s SqueezeCenter software. This is a good time to explain that the Music Vault is really nothing more than a dedicated PC/server with a big honking hard drive. All I had to do was hook up the Music Vault to my home network via an Ethernet cable, attach its AC cable, turn it on, and wait for the Music Vault to appear on my main computer desktop as a network hard drive. Installation proved to be almost glitch-free. But to demonstrate how easy it is to set up a Music Vault he unboxed the unit and said, “Now you install it.” So instead of shipping a unit he delivered it in person. Sound Science’s Neal Van Berg lives about 40 miles away from me in Castle Rock, Colorado.

What the Music Vault promises is a pain-free way to liberate your Logitech Squeezebox music system from the tyranny of an always-running computer.

Even if you do have “the skills,” only a few NAS drives have the right interior topology to support all the software and hardware needed to host Logitech’s SqueezeCenter software and ancillary programs. Setting up a NAS drive so you can access your music library while your computer is off requires at least a network administrator’s level of computer skill. While this may not sound like a big deal, being able to turn your computer off while still maintaining access to all your music files is difficult to do with a Logitech Squeezebox system. The Music Vault II also allows you to connect a Squeezebox to your music library without having to keep your computer constantly on. But wait, as they say on all those late-night infomercials, there’s more. The Music Vault II is a custom-configured NAS (network-attached storage) hard drive/network server that has been designed to work seamlessly with any Logitech Squeezebox, Sonos, Denon, or other networked music server. Except that the CDs are virtual and the vault is made of silicon. The words Music Vault conjure up the image of a stainless-steel safe full of CDs.

Network attached storage music server